This article examines the texts on a group of 16 seats excavated by Ernesto Schiaparelli at Deir el Medîna, mostly associated with votive chapel CI but probably also from other chapels. Bruyère argued that these seats, and the many uninscribed seats found in other chapels at the site, indicate that cultic communities met regularly in the chapels for worship. This essay adds a few more details to our knowledge of these communities. Firstly, most of the men mentioned in the inscriptions lived in the mid-20th Dynasty. They were not related to each other, so that if the owners of these seats...

This study deals with a unique crown that was created for Queen Arsinoë II. The aim is to identify and understand the symbolism that is embedded in each pictorial detail that together form the crown and how this reflects the wearer's socio-political and religious positions. The study focuses on the crown and its details, while also including all contextual aspects of the relief scenes in order to understand the general meaning. This crown was later developed and usurped by other female figures; the material includes 158 Egyptian relief scenes dating from Arsinoë's lifetime to Emperor...

Technical development gives new possibilities for the interpretation and popularization of archaeological research. An example can be derived from Tell el-Farkha in Egypt, where the extremely interesting tombs excavated at the site have gained a new life thanks to virtual 3D reconstructions. Two of these structures, which illustrate the beginning and the end of the Egyptian practice of subsidiary burials, were chosen and discussed in detail to show the advantages of the application of a new approach. To achieve this, a typical archaeological description of excavated features was...

The paper presents insight into the corpus of hieratic graffiti in the 2005 discovered tomb N13.1 in the Gebel Asyut al-gharbi in Middle Egypt. The owner of this rock tomb lived at the very end of the First Intermediate Period, while the first graffiti seem to be written at the very beginning of the 18th dynasty, and the latest at the end of the 20th dynasty. Beside many graffiti with visitors' formulae, more than twenty texts are copying famous literary works. The context of literature fixed on tomb walls of the past, which is singular for Egypt until now, and the date of the earliest...

The fragmentary 'Processional' wall painting from Teleilat Ghassul in Jordan is here shown to depict a religious procession involving eight individuals rather than the three identified in the original 1970s reconstruction. All of the figures wear masks and carry objects, but elaborately robed leaders, members perhaps of a dedicated priestly class, are clearly distinguished from their naked attendants. The scene belongs to the Late Chalcolithic period when Levantine society was becoming increasingly hierarchical, and the wall painting as a whole illustrates the prominent role of elites in...